Category: Science Fiction

We are not the same being we once were.
So then, if we are no longer human, what are we?

Title: ScytheAuthor: Neal ShustermanGood things about this book: It is well written and it has a very original (and scary) plot.Bad things about this book: When I bought it I thought it was a stand alone but it turns out it isn’t and I have to wait a lot for the sequel.Do I recommend it? Yes yes yes!Rate: 5/5

This scared the hell out of me. Second book by Shusterman and second win for me, that’s for sure. He writes and takes you to an adventure, gets you hooked up into the story with amazing descriptions of a world, so vivid, you believe it exists yet you don’t want to live in it. It was scary because of its realness. This was such a compelling story and it had this depth in it that made me realize that no matter what will happen, our future won’t be nice. How is it that we are forever destined to ruin every good thing the world offers us?

People prophesized doom at the hands of a soulless machine. But apparently the machine had a purer soul than any human.

The Earth in this book has defeated diseases and death, and its society is run by the Thunderhead, an AI pure and just who helps everyone. Long story short, the world is great. But there’s only one problem: if people don’t die, there won’t be enough space for all of them to live, eat, to work. People in it “survives”: they take jobs that aren’t really necessary, go to school when they don’t really need it, have lots of children they don’t want to take care of. They are not truly living because when you are not afraid of mortality, poverty and hunger, then what really is your purpose?

Immortality has turned us all into cartoons.

That’s how the Scythedom was born. Scythes have the power to glean people, killing them definitely, taking them off a world where they are immortal and they can reset their age whenever they like. Scythes are human beings that are given a license to kill (and to grant 1 year immunity if they want to) without consequences, without laws forbidding it, with the world scared of them but at the same time charmed by them. Charmed by these people in colorful robes who can randomly select you to remove you from the world, adding your death to their annual quota of people that need to be killed in order to maintain balance in population.

Power comes infected with the only disease left to us: the virus called human nature.

Scythes’ actions are not ruled by the Thunderhead, who is always just and never makes mistakes, so they are flawed: they’re humans after all. There is corruption, favoritism, unnecessary cruelty, and people are unaware of all that. They just keep on living until one of those Scythes decides you can no longer keep doing that. Maybe the decision was truly random or maybe just maybe that scythe didn’t like you because you were too rich, too ugly or too fat. Are they punished for being biased and unjust? Not really.

To put oneself above all other laws is a fundamental recipe for disaster.

It was obvious that in a society with no more death or diseases and only one self governed institution that proclaims itself above all laws there’d be corruption. It makes me sick thinking how inevitable it was because, of course, they are humans and humans with power are dangerous. Give a group of people too much power over humanity and you’ll see how everything the Thunderhead worked so hard for crumbles, one little piece at a time.

This book is about two scythe apprentices, Citra and Rowan, and the different paths they take and are forced to take in the year of training before the last test that will proclaim them fit or unfit for the role. Following their mentor around, the lovely Honorable Scythe Faraday, will show them what lies behind the scenes of gleaning. Will they like what they see? Can they see themselves wearing the scythe robe and killing people? Will they ever lose their humanity and start enjoying it?

There’s so much to say about this book but none of the things I can say about it will make it justice. I wrote vaguely about what is the reality of the book and what is it about but, trust me, it is so much more than that. This book has lots of layers and without reading it you wouldn’t unravel it the right way, in the right order. I will end up spoiling the journey and this is a journey I took and recommend everyone to take.

My greatest wish for humanity is not for peace or comfort or joy. It is that we all still die a little inside every time we witness the death of another. For only the pain of empathy will keep us human.

Experience their journey first hand. Fall in love with characters, and hate other characters. Cheer for them. Have your heart broken and wish you had nanites inside of you like them that’ll make you heal and calm yourself in no time. Be mad at the injustice. Be frustrated at how ugly humans can really be when they think only about themselves and their wellbeing. Be moved. Learn. Be ready for all of this can seem improbable but maybe it is not after all.

“I wanted so badly for there to be more. I ached for there to be more than my crappy little life.” He shakes his head. “And there was more. I just couldn’t see it.”

Title: More Than ThisAuthor: Patrick NessGood things about this book: I loved everything!Bad things about this book: Not sure it was the right choice for this book but I would have loved an epilogue.Do I recommend it? Yes, read it.Rate: 5+++/5☆: It made my “favourite books” list

There’s this peculiarity in Patrick Ness’ books that I genuinely love and cherish and no matter what I’m experiencing, they resonate with me, with my soul, and I end up thinking about them almost every single day, carrying them deep within my heart. I just love them so much it hurts.

It’s now been two days since I finished the book and more than often I have found myself staring into nothing, thinking about the truth about what I read, the deepness of what’s been told, the fear I got realizing that that future might not be so unlikely. It scared the hell out of me.

Seth drowns, we read his inner monologue while drowning, how he feels, what is happening to his body. We know he drowns but then he wakes up in a deserted city, wearing nothing but bandages, he is disoriented; yet he is alive. How? Why?

“He’s died, and woken up in his own, personal hell.”

I had many theories about where Seth was. Theories I was proud of thinking, theories worth of being turned into TV shows or even movies. Sadly I wasn’t right but the different outcome surprised me for the better. I would have never thought of that and that was kind of perfect. I love being surprised. I also love predicable outcomes so it’s pretty easy to please me.

I loved Seth and I liked Regine and Tomasz a lot. Main character and sidekicks on point, together in this weird environment they are trying to figure out and survive into. The questions Seth asked himself were questions I was asking, the doubts he was having were the same I was having; I was one with the book, a part of it. There was no end to the guessing, to what the hell was that place and what were they supposed to do. It was fun how at the beginning Seth just thought he was in hell and that was it, he was just going to go with it and be okay with it. Then everything happens and nothing is as before.

“We take random events and we put them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much of it obviously isn’t true.”

This was my fourth book by Patrick Ness and I can say without doubt that, for me, he is a genius. His stories are contemporary mixed with fantasy or sci-fi. He is an excellent writer and the way he incorporates everyday issues with fantasy elements it’s flawless. The themes he writes about are hard yet he presents them in a way it’s easy for everyone to understand, to relate to the characters; I know I want to fight more, I want to let my voice be heard, I want to change the world even if I do it starting from my little environments.

It doesn’t matter how little you can do, if you fight for what you believe, if you want to see change, if you want the world to be a great place to live for everyone, then don’t give up before starting because “what difference my voice can make?”.

“There’s always beauty,” Seth murmurs. “If you know where to look.”

Reading books by Patrick Ness makes me want to be a better person for me and for whoever doesn’t have it easy in life. Because everyone deserves to be free to be who they are without being afraid to be harmed, physically or emotionally, because of it. Because you shouldn’t be afraid to seek help if you have mental illness and you feel the world slipping through your fingers. Because you shouldn’t feel the obligation to be strong by yourself and that it’s okay to be weak and ask for a hand. Because we shouldn’t allow anyone to deny us the happiness we know we deserve. There is more than struggle out there; there is more than fear; there is more than what we think it’s unchangeable.

As with previous Illuminae transcripts, please forgive the colorful language. Our vidtech is no Shakespeare.

Title: GeminaAuthor: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff (With journal illustrations by Marie Lu)Good things about this book: Great characters, great story.Bad things about this book: We will have to wait for the sequel to know more about everything and everyone.Do I recommend it? Yes, it’s amazing.Rate: 5+++/5 (☆: It made my “favourite books” list)

Chuff Chuff, all aboard, hurry up, the train is leaving soon. First stop: the place where your feelings get fed then crushed then cuddled up. Second stop: the land of plot twists in which nobody is safe. Third stop: the island of charming and badass youth. Fourth and last stop: villain town with its cruel inhabitants!

What the hell was this book? What the actual rollercoaster of emotions was this thing? 659 pages of anguish, trepidation, cold sweat and palpitations. I don’t know how I survived all of that. I read it slowly having little time and maybe that was for the best because I could savor it little by little until those last pages that gave me so many attacks I wonder how I’m not giggling while crying in a corner.

I did giggle, I also did almost cry; trust me, everything that could happen inside of me, feelings wise, happened. I’m still recovering, trying to make sense of a lot of things that happened, remembering passages, trying to figure out how I didn’t see some of the things coming. How the hell was I supposed to be ready for everything to happen at once? There were some paralleled chapters that still have me confused, I won’t deny that. It’s a pity I can’t comment on anything because this adventure has to be experience first hand, no previews, no warnings. Ok, I did warn you about the emotions but come on, you’ve read Illuminae, so you’ve got to start this book expecting the feelings waves.

Apparently she’s got revenge on her mind, and it’s really annoying when people try to talk at you while you’re feeling murderish.

Gemina starts just after the ending of Illuminae but on board of a totally different ship, a jump station with a giant wormhole in the middle, and a new set of characters. This station is the destination of Kady and company after the disastrous events of Illuminae. Kady’s father is on the Heimdall station ignoring all that have happened to his family on the other side of the universe. The jump station is invaded by the same people who did all those horrible things to Kerenza in Illuminae. Those pieces of poop! Poopy people! It will be our heroes’ job to get them out of there without getting killed in the process. Won’t be an easy task and it will have your heart beating like crazy.

I guess she figures she can sleep when she’s dead.

Hanna Donnelly, our marvelous heroine is a kickass girl with a great sense of fashion and a super cute boyfriend. She can kick your butt, my butt and the butts of half of Rome in an afternoon if you give her the time. She had my heart from the first pages; fierce, brave, apparently very tall, model like (but of course, ladies and gentlemen, of course), she knows all the martial arts and she is very good at all of them. She brings courage to the whole operation. Go Hanna!

He simply stops in place and shoots her a smile, showing off those dimples the ladies love. He smiles at her like he’s not tired at all, like he’s not wearing another man’s blood under his suit, like all he wanted in life was to catch a glimpse of her.

Nik Malikov, son of crime leaders, drug dealer extraordinaire and charm master, he has a crush on our Hanna and he finds himself trapped in all that’s happening on the station. Nik is one charming boy, all tattoos and dimples, flirtatious messages and dream smiles. Yeah, world, I indeed have crushed on the boy, couldn’t help myself, it happened. He brings humor to the whole operation. Go Nik!

Dark hair and darker eyes. Dimples. The kind of abs you get from around five hundred sit-ups a day. There’s not much else to do in prison, after all.

Ella Malikov, Nik’s cousin and head of the gang. She is the Mr. Robot of the Heimdall station, the pirate of all pirates. She hacks like she was born doing it, like she hacked her way out of her mom’s womb. She’s that good. There’s more to her than that, though. She is also hilarious and she embarrasses her cousin bringing comedy gold moments to the chat conversations. She brings gray matter to the whole operation. Go Ella!

We had to sacrifice several kittens to ancient bloodgods in order to crack the encryption on this thing.

The story wouldn’t be complete without our not forgotten heroes from Illuminae and their appearance is like a breathe of fresh air. I don’t think it’s a spoiler they play a part on this book since the stories are interconnected so no spoilers alerts! AIDAN!! Do you remember AIDAN? Do you? My little murderous AI, all hurt and malfunctioning, makes a great entrance in Gemina and I wanted to throw him a welcome back party. He is always a ray of sunshine (darkness?), bringer of the best comebacks in conversations. He just can’t help but being logical, of course, since he was built that way, but his development and his inner monologues are so deep and full of reflections on how random we humans are that they always amaze me. Go Hypatia! Go Kady! Go AIDAN!

Explaining how great a book is without really saying much about the book is hard and I don’t know if I conveyed all I wanted you to know about its greatness in just a few apparently random sentences. Reading the paragraphs above I see everything that happened in the book because I have read it and everything reminds me of something important, something fun or just something ordinary about the story. I don’t think this review has the power to convince you to read Gemina because if you are here you have already read Illuminae and the book alone is enough to convince anybody to at least give it a try. Unless you hated it, in which case I don’t judge you, and I proceed to activate the countdown in my head for the third book in The Illuminae Files series! But the real question is: will it be green? Yellow? I say gold!

“Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.”

Title: The Left Hand of DarknessAuthor: Ursula K. Le GuinWhy you should read this book: Because it’s set in space and it’s about aliens with very peculiar characteristics!Do I recommend it? Yes, it can be a little complex but overall it’s a very nice and interesting book.Rate: 4/5

I wanted to give this book 5 stars only because of Estraven but I can’t. The book is beautiful, well written and extremely fascinating BUT the stereotypes about men and women from our main character bothered me a little too much. So, it’s 5+ stars for Estraven, 4 real stars for the whole book! Maybe 4- when Genly starts complaining about Estraven being too feminine and that scares the hell out of him. Why?

I have to admit that the names and different language was a little difficult to read and pronounce in my head but after a bit I got used to it and enjoyed trying to figure out how where they pronounce. I still think I have mispronounced EVERYTHING!!

I have always loved a sci-fi book with a story, occasionally adventurous, in a faraway planet and aliens. Who doesn’t? This didn’t disappoint in all of what I was expecting and I got a lot more than I was bargaining for. It doesn’t have forbidden love, and it doesn’t have a traditional love story. There is love and there are feelings. No spoilers here, it’s in the synopsis.

“Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself, Therem. Both and one. A shadow on snow.”

We have an Envoy of a faraway planet on a planet inhabited by genderless humanoids aliens. These aliens go in kemmer once a month (kemmer is like being “in heat”) and randomly they become male or female and mate with one another resulting often in a pregnancy. This fact can be overwhelming but for our dear Genly it was almost the worst thing that could ever existed in the universe. He is really close-minded and I was annoyed by his remarks most of the times. Other times he was ok.

“It is strange. I am the only man in all Gethen that has trusted you entirely, and I am the only man in Gethen that you have refused to trust.”

The best thing about this book came in the shape of a tiny dark-skinned genderless alien with a soft and round body called Therem Harth rem ir Estraven. Yep, that’s his whole glorious name. His parts of the story were my favorite; parts in which we could read his journal. He is a very methodical person and has a clear opinion of certain facts. I can only describe him as sweet and peculiar. I was very angry at Genly every time he was rude to him. Estraven is nothing but a doll and you better realize is soon or I’ll slap you real hard! Estraven makes me emotional.

“The best food I’ve eaten on Gethen has always been in your company, Estraven.”

I have read only the Earthsea books by Ursula K. Le Guin and I loved them. I fell in love with the story, the magic, the dragons (of course) and in particular I fell in love with Ged. Ged is the main character of the first book and a recurrent character in the others. I love him! There is something in these characters she writes that get to your soul. They are not perfect. These characters are not heroes like the ones you are used to read about. They have a quiet personality and they are so much more than what they seem from the outside. It’s hard to understand but while reading about Estraven I had the same feelings I had while reading about Ged. I thought: “This is one hell of a character I’m going to treasure!”. Yeah, he went right inside my “favorite characters” treasure chest and he will stay there forever.

I haven’t really explained the book because it’s not easy. Months and months pass, sometimes the story felt rushed. A lot of things happen and some news maybe you wanted to know more about where explained in one or two lines. This is a must read if you love sci-fi. It’s surely a must read if you love Mrs. Le Guin. Beware that there may be lots of stereotypes because it’s an old book written by a mind of that time. They may bother you but I think these issues don’t ruin the story in its wholesome. I’ll give it a try!

“You know, sometimes a thing, a system, a creation grows so old, and corrupt, and weighed down by its own baggage, that all you can do is change it. Move on. Start afresh. It’s frightening, but it has to be done.”

Title: RailheadAuthor: Philip ReeveWhy you should read this book: Because there are trains that talk!! And robots!

If you know me you’d know I love sci-fi books. Space, its secrets and its possibilities have always intrigued me. Imagining far away worlds on other planets, aliens and humans living together, a new kind of universe unfolded before our eyes, that’s something I want to witness but I know I never will. I would hibernate myself and wait frozen in time and see for myself a new kind of living. I am almost glad I won’t because, as usual, humans will find a way to corrupt everything.

We have a main character, he is a thief and has being hired to steal a weird box from the Emperor’s train for a really pale man called Raven who is very mysterious and people want him dead. Our protagonist is a boy that I liked and hated in equal measure. His name is Zen and sometimes he really annoyed me. I know you are young, boy, but think a little bit more before making some very bad decisions. He isn’t always annoying and luckily for us he sometimes uses that big head of his to think and accept others opinions.

“It’s called the Pyxis,” said Raven. “Don’t let the fancy name intimidate you. It just means ‘box’ in one of those Old Earth languages, Roman or Spanish or Klingon…”

This book has many worlds (planets/moons/satellites/etc) connected by some sort of Stargates called K-gates. K-gates can only be crossed on board of trains and not just any kind of train, but sentient trains with their own names and personalities. Some are really rude, some really kind, some plain cruel. Trains can be really scary and I’m not talking “Thomas the Tank Engine” scary but worse! Thomas is one creepy and annoying train.

There are also these God identities that are only artificial intelligences created but humans a long long time ago. These beings are made of data and live in the datasea that contains all the information of every single inhabitant of the Network worlds connected through the gates. They can also download themselves into fake bodies and visit the worlds. How weird and cool is that?

When you think about the future with real advanced technology, you are bound to think there are also robots, right? Robots are a must! In this book there are android beings called Motoriks and we met a few of them throughout the story. I liked them a lot.

Our little annoying Zen has to do the mission to steal that weird box with a motorik girl named Nova. She has freckles and she is very proud of them! Nova is the element that keeps Zen a little out of trouble. She can’t always succeed because that boy is unpredictable (read: moody).

What I didn’t like because I have a terrible phobia were the insects. In these worlds live some sort of intelligent cockroaches that put themselves together to form a humanoid shape and talk. They talk and they are a sea of bugs with their bug legs and wings and everything I have nightmares every other night! Please, I don’t want talking bugs in the future!!!

Before ending this review I want to warn you that there is one character that you will find annoying from beginning to end. At least that happened to me and if you have tastes similar to mine I want you to be prepared for the annoying girl called Threnody!! Beware!

That being said, I would recommend this book (and the sequel will be out later this coming week) to sci-fi fans but also to the curious readers who want a little adventure.

Do I recommend it? Yes, and there is also a sequel I can’t wait to read.Rate: 4/5

This is a book about cultural differences, friendship, family and love. This book is a journey. A literal journey. A journey to a small angry planet far away in the known galaxy. A ship specialized in wormholes is called to build a tunnel to link this angry planet to another one to save months of space travel. The journey will show us how different the members of the crew of this ship are.

How are they different? The crew is composed of different kind of beings: a human Martian girl organizing paperwork, a human captain, a sentient AI, two crazy and talented human techs (one with two dads and the other is a little person), a furry navigator that is not one but two beings in one, a chef/doctor with so many legs capable of fantastic things, a super cuddly lizard-like pilot, a weirdly pale human being with a passion for algae.

This description is very simplistic and it’s only the very little tip of the iceberg that is this amazing crew. I can’t tell you how much deep these people are because I can’t explain it without revealing everything there is to know about them. Every chapter has sections and each character has a space in which he/she/it/them/xyr can show us their pov. Every one of them has a different background. Even the humans are not alike; they come from different experiences, from different planets and from different realities.

Feelings are relative. And at the root, they’re all the same, even if they grow from different experiences and exist in different scales.

Throughout the book I was afraid something might go terribly wrong. I won’t say if it was true or not but let me tell you that the feeling kept me company until the very end. I was surprised by many of the things that happened!! Rosemary was a little bit like our inner voice because she explained how we judge other beings based on our perception of reality. That species that couples in front of everyone and it’s known for its orgies parties? A human can’t judge that based on what they think is right or wrong. So many things has to be put on perspective because each culture is different and accepting this fact opens so many doors to so many possibilities.

Humans had a long, storied history of forcing their way into places where they didn’t belong.

I loved Ohan, the navigator. Their species is really interesting and hard to understand but they are sweet and I imagine this furry teddy bear with long fingers and I’m happy. I don’t think they are really like that but that picture keeps me warm and serene.

A black hole was the perfect place to contemplate death. There was nothing in the universe that could last for ever. Not stars. Not matter. Nothing.

Lately I’m really into sci-fi novels. I love space and I love technology. I might not understand a lot about any of that but maybe that’s one of the reasons it fascinates me this much. If you are into space, into sci-fi and aliens, then this is for you. If you don’t know if you are interested, I say you can give this a try. Maybe you’ll find out this magnificent genre isn’t too bad after all.

I am always trying to bring people to the dark side (the sci-fi side) without success! But I never give up!

‘I’ll never understand how the rest of you expect brand new adults to be able to teach kids how to be people.’

This is going to be one tough review to write because there are so many things I loved about this book but I have no idea how to put them into words.
This won’t be a traditional review, this won’t be a review at all; I won’t write much about the book but about what I thought while reading it. I just feel that if I start writing about the book then I would ruin all the fun for the first readers. I don’t want to be the party pooper of the situation. Just so you know, I loved it, it will stay with me forever and I will recommend it to people!

First of all I loved all the references, even the ones I didn’t get because I was too young during those years.
I was born in 1985 and I was lucky because I have a sister 6 years older than me that introduced me to so many things and gave me almost all of her videogames consoles when she was too cool for them. I am still not too cool for any of them; maybe now I’m only too lazy to give videogames much time. I was too little to know a lot of the 80s references that were used in the book not only because of my age but also because I didn’t grow up in the US but in Ecuador. Yes, we could watch a lot of US TV shows and movies but not everything, or at least that’s what I think because I don’t remember a lot of them.

Every time the characters said something I knew I started grinning like a fool. I was so happy to relate to some of the excitement they felt! And when I didn’t know what they were referring to, I made my researches and now a lot of things are on my to-watch list. Just a few weeks ago I saw episode 0 of the new season of Mr. Robot and they were talking about Wargames and how the movie made people wonder if those hacks were truly possible and how it inspired the increment of security protocols. I found it very interesting and now I need to watch that movie: I really don’t know why I haven’t watched it yet.

Something weird is happening with my reading process. By sheer coincidence every book I read has something that I find in the book I start reading after finishing it. It’s a chain reaction I can’t seem to stop. Let’s see if this weird fate is going to repeat itself after this. This book had Vonnegut references and I came to know him from the last book I read and now there are a couple of his books I really want to read. How crazy is that? References, I just love them! I learn so many things from them.

“I was watching a collection of vintage ’80s cereal commercials when I paused to wonder why cereal manufacturers no longer included toy prizes inside every box. It was a tragedy, in my opinion. Another sign that civilization was going straight down the tubes.”

The whole looking for the “Golden Ticket”, the Halliday Egg, was intriguing and exciting. The “gunters” (the egg hunters) studied everything there was to know about the creator of the virtual utopia OASIS, to look for clues to find the egg. But OASIS is immense and Halliday liked so many things. I wonder how Wade (aka Parzival) found the time to learn, watch, listen, play and read everything. He also went to school and some of the things he liked best he did repeatedly. Are there enough hours in a day to do everything he did? That’s a miracle and Wade has my utmost admiration.

“No one in the world gets what they want and that is beautiful.”

It’s the future (a horrible one on top of that) but it has this nostalgia feeling and sometimes it’s hard to separate the two different eras. When this future didn’t remind me of the 80s, it reminded me of our time now. People living their lives through the internet, social networks, fake personas, scams, illegality, etc. In this future you create an avatar and that’s you. You can make it real or you can alter your appearance to be whoever you want to be, not really to deceive but mainly to feel better about yourself. Real life is ugly so you need your fake life to make you happy and if to do so you reduce your nose size, make yourself taller, thinner, prettier, so be it. You have the world and you don’t even need to get out of the house. OASIS is your everything, you don’t need anything else.

I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal.

So take the virtual utopia everyone lives in, add a spectacular egg hunt with a multibillionaire prize, then add a very clever anti-hero with his virtual friends who are everything but perfect, complete everything with the evil corporation run by an evil villain who wants to rule the real and virtual world, and you have READY PLAYER ONE. The perfect combination of everything fun, smart and geek that will make you wish you were looking for the egg with Parzival, Art3mis, Aech, Shoto and Daito!

Are you ready?
Always, baby!

Do I recommend it? Yes, read it now and love it forever.Rate: 5+++/5☆: It made my “favourite books” list

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